Obama is no LBJ (and couldn't be)

Apr. 10, 2014
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President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. / YOICHI R. OKAMOTO, AP

by David Jackson, USA TODAY

by David Jackson, USA TODAY

President Obama is no President Lyndon Johnson - and wouldn't be even if he tried.

To those who might wish the president would emulate Johnson's hands-on approach with Congress, Obama and his supporters say the times - and the Republicans - have changed too much in the past five decades.

"LBJ does not live in these times, and Obama would be a stranger in his," says former Johnson aide Bill Moyers.

Memories of the Johnson presidency are in vogue. Obama will speak next week at a conference on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the president occasionally hears a variation of this question: Why can't you be more like LBJ?

In a recent interview with New Yorker magazine, Obama noted that for all of Johnson's legislative skills, his most famous achievements â?? the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare and other parts of what LBJ called the "Great Society" â?? came when he had huge Democratic majorities in Congress.

"When he lost that historic majority â?¦ he had the same problems with Congress that most presidents at one point or another have," Obama said.

The tragedy of the Vietnam War shadows Johnson's reputation, but his domestic record is enjoying a renaissance amid a series of 50-year anniversary events. The Johnson library in Austin will host a three-day summit on the Civil Rights Act that will feature speeches by Obama and former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

The LBJ revival even includes a Broadway play starring Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston as the wheeler-dealer Texan president.

When critics say Obama should be more like Johnson, it's usually a discussion about congressional relations. LBJ spent a lot of time dealing with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, even those who disagreed with him.

Obama has had more of a distant relationship with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

"You've got to sit down with those people and say, 'OK, what do you need to make a deal?' " historian John Steele Gordon says.

Joseph Califano, a former aide to Johnson, says Obama should work with Republicans whether he believes they are obstructionists or not. He notes that Johnson faced intense objections from Southern Democrats over civil rights laws, yet found other avenues of agreement that helped smooth the legislative process.

"You've got to do that," Califano says. "It takes time. It takes a lot of time. Look, this is a 24/7 job."

Others counter that the political world doesn't work the way it did during the 1960s.

"2008 was not 1963," Moyers says. "Obama faces an implacable Republican Party radically opposed to any and all government and willing, or so it seems to me, to tear the country apart to achieve its goal."

Moyers says Johnson would be happy with the accomplishments of Obama and a Democratic Congress in 2009 and 2010, particularly the health care law.

Democratic and Republican Party organizations have weakened over the past five decades, and that has affected presidential leadership since Johnson's time. Television and independent fundraising sources have made lawmakers more or less free agents, better able to reject presidential blandishments.

"There were stronger party organizations back home to whom the members of Congress were beholden," says longtime Obama political adviser David Axelrod. "This meant presidents could call local party leaders to help line up their members."

Axelrod says there was "less rigid partisanship" in Congress during the 1960s. That enabled LBJ to work with the GOP, notably Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen, R-Ill.

Republicans say Obama has refused to work with them. McConnell spokesman Don Stewart says the senator "has said dozens of times that if the president will come to the middle, there is a lot we can get accomplished."

In the old days, Johnson could win congressional voters by inducement (offering judgeships or public works projects) or threat (withdrawing judgeships and projects). Ethics laws and media scrutiny have made those tactics a little more difficult.

There are also stylistic differences between LBJ and Obama.

The earthy, rough-hewn Texan often applied what came to be known as "the Johnson treatment," leaning into people, rubbing their elbows, cajoling, threatening and sometimes even begging lawmakers to do his bidding.

It's hard to imagine the bookish, professorial Obama grabbing someone by the lapels and pulling him (or her) close in â?? and harder still to imagine that style might be effective today.

Matt Grossmann, an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University, says Johnson presided when more people believed in government activism.

LBJ and lawmakers of his time would ask, "What can be accomplished that I support?" says Grossmann, author of a book on governing called Artists of the Possible. Obama and politicians in both parties tend to ask, "How can I get closer to my ideal policies?" â?? a tougher goal in more polarized times.

Mark Updegrove, director of the LBJ library, says it's no surprise that some Obama backers would like to see him emulate Johnson.

"There is nobody in the last 50 years who comes close to the legislative record of Lyndon Johnson," Updegrove says.